Dallas, Texas
Graduate by Hilton Dallas
A mid-century SMU motel becomes Hilton's first Texas Graduate, restored rather than rebuilt.
Open · July 2025
Graduate by Hilton Dallas opened across from Southern Methodist University in July 2025, the Graduate Hotels brand's first Texas location. The 93-room hotel is a restoration of the long-running Lumen Hotel, a 1963 motel turned boutique property that AJ Capital Partners bought in 2019, and it leans on SMU and Highland Park references (down to a red, white and blue color palette and a new Tex-Mex smokehouse) rather than a generic collegiate look.
The essentials
- Group
- Hilton (Graduate Hotels, AJ Capital Partners)
- Opening
- July 2025
- Rooms & suites
- 93 rooms
- Segment
- Upscale / Lifestyle
- Designer
- NC
- Entry rate
- From $190
The place
Graduate by Hilton Dallas sits at 6101 Hillcrest Avenue, directly across from Southern Methodist University in the Park Cities area that straddles Highland Park and University Park, two small, affluent municipalities enclosed within the city of Dallas. The address puts guests within walking distance of SMU's campus and the Snider Plaza shopping strip, a short drive from downtown Dallas and Dallas Love Field.
The concept
The building has a genuine before-and-after. It opened as a roadside motel in 1963, was reworked into the boutique Lumen Hotel around 2012, and was bought in 2019 by Nashville-based AJ Capital Partners, the company behind the Graduate Hotels collection that Hilton folded into its lifestyle portfolio in 2024. A conversion to Graduate was first discussed as early as 2021 and took longer than planned, giving AJ Capital time to restore the property's original geometric, mid-century structure rather than replace it. Inside, Graduate's collegiate design language is filtered through Highland Park and SMU specifically: leather furnishings, cowhide ottomans, shearling armchairs and hand-woven textiles sit against a red, white and blue palette echoing SMU's Mustangs colors. It is Graduate Hotels' first property in Texas.
Dining & wellness
Food and drink center on Los Charros Tex-Mex Smokehouse, a Tex-Mex and Texas-barbecue restaurant from Dallas chef Julian Barsotti that replaced the property's previous restaurant concept. A lobby lounge anchors the ground floor, and an outdoor pool and terrace (a holdover of the site's original motel-pool layout) serves as the hotel's main amenity space alongside flexible event rooms. No spa is reported.
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